Monday 11 November 2013

Goal setting

Seeing as the new season is pretty much well upon us, this attempt at technical advice is a little late. But better late than never as they say!

When looking to improve over a season, over the course of consecutive games, and beyond, if looking to reach your pinnacle from a young age, setting yourself targets is a simple but incredibly effective way to go about it. Like anything, breaking it down into managable chunks will allow you to focus on the immediate and deal with changing the present first; not trying to do too much and spreading yourself thin, but instead realistically going about personal improvement. Brick by brick until you reach a stage where you are further along the development scale than you were before. And just as it is important to work hard on the pitch and at the training ground, it is also important to work in training out of that sphere, by yourself, to improve; get fitter or stronger mentally or better at reading plays etc. etc.

But it sounds easy in theory, so how do you about it?

The following are ideas that you can work into your own training regime and inspire other ways of improving through targets set over the short and then long, term: 

  • Lower your goals against average. Your target could be to reduce the amount of goals you have conceded so far. Say from three to one. This takes more focus on stopping each and every shot as it happens though and the intense concentration, rather than drifting off and then conceding.
  • Achieve a set number of saves at training or in games (keeping tally).
  • Quicken your speed of sprinting out: timing yourself doing sprints with a ladder if unable to work out a guestimate
  • Improve on an aspect you find is a weakness
  • Work on rebound control so that you can put the saved shot away to safety to reduce scoring chances
  • Make sure you don't allow any 'soft' goals
  • Improve on a statistic of stopping a percentage of saves versus goals allowed per game, which can be calculated after the game using the American goals against average system.

The aim is to build up over the season, review and then keep building. With target setting, you want to analyse key areas that need improvement ("if it's break don't fix it"). You can start out with stamina, or explosivity for fitness, and then saving with the right hand for instance for save making. Start out small and work upwards and onwards, so that you have enough to focus on over the season, rather than running out of ideas or over working and over stretching yourself.

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